Detailed analyses of poverty and well-being in developing countries, based on household surveys, have been ongoing for more...
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Detailed analyses of poverty and well-being in developing countries, based on household surveys, have been ongoing for more than three decades. The large majority of developing countries now regularly conduct a variety of household surveys, and their information base with respect to poverty and wellbeing has improved dramatically. Nevertheless, appropriate measurement of poverty remains complex and controversial. This is particularly true in developing countries where (i) the stakes with respect to poverty reduction are high; (ii) the determinants of living standards are often volatile; and (iii) related information bases, while much improved, are often characterized by significant non-sample error. It also remains, to a surprisingly high degree, an activity undertaken by technical assistance personnel and consultants based in developed countries. This book seeks to enhance the transparency, replicability, and comparability of existing practice. It also aims to significantly lower the barriers to entry to the conduct of rigorous poverty measurement and increase the participation of analysts from developing countries in their own poverty assessments. The book focuses on two domains: the measurement of absolute consumption poverty and a first-order dominance approach to multidimensional welfare analysis. In each domain, it provides a series of computer codes designed to facilitate analysis by allowing the analyst to start from a flexible and known base. The volume covers the theoretical grounding for the code streams provided, a chapter on ‘estimation in practice’, a series of eleven case studies where the code streams are operationalized, a synthesis, an extension to inequality, and a look forward.

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Author:
Channing Arndt, Finn Tarp

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Feb 01, 2018
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Feb 01, 2018

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While it is possible for economies to grow based on abundant land or natural resources, more often structural...
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While it is possible for economies to grow based on abundant land or natural resources, more often structural change—the shift of resources from low-productivity to high-productivity sectors—is the key driver of economic growth. Structural transformation is vital for Africa. The region’s much-lauded growth turnaround since 1995 has been the result of fewer economic policy mistakes, robust commodity prices, and new discoveries of natural resources. At the same time, Africa’s economic structure has changed very little. Primary commodities and natural resources still account for the bulk of exports. Industry is most often the leading driver of structural transformation. Africa’s experience with industrialization over the past thirty years has been disappointing. In 2010, sub-Saharan Africa’s average share of manufacturing value added in GDP was 10 percent, unchanged from the 1970s. In fact, the share of medium- and high-tech goods in manufacturing production has been falling since the mid-1990s. Per capita manufactured exports are less than 10 percent of the developing country average. Consequently, Africa’s industrial transformation has yet to take place. This book presents results of comparative country-based research that sought to answer a seemingly simple but puzzling question: why is there so little industry in Africa? It brings together detailed country case studies of industrial policies and industrialization outcomes in eleven countries, conducted by teams of national researchers in partnership with experts on industrial development. It provides the most comprehensive description and analysis available of the contemporary industrialization experience in low-income Africa.

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Author:
Carol Newman, et al., Co-Editors

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Feb 01, 2018
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Feb 01, 2018

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It is now widely accepted that politics plays a significant role in shaping the possibilities for inclusive development....
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It is now widely accepted that politics plays a significant role in shaping the possibilities for inclusive development. However, the specific ways in which this happens across different types and forms of development, and in different contexts, remains poorly understood. This collection provides the state of the art review regarding what is currently known about the politics of inclusive development. Leading academics offer systematic reviews of how politics shapes development across multiple dimensions, including through growth, natural resource governance, poverty reduction, service delivery, social protection, justice systems, the empowerment of marginalized groups, and the role of both traditional and non-traditional donors. The book not only provides a comprehensive update but also a groundbreaking range of new directions for thinking and acting around these issues. The book’s originality thus derives not only from the wide scope of its case-study material, but also from the new conceptual approaches it offers for thinking about the politics of inclusive development, and the innovative and practical suggestions for donors, policymakers, and practitioners that flow from this.

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Author:
Sam Hickey, et al., Co-Editors

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Feb 01, 2018
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Feb 01, 2018

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Who are the dominant owners of US public debt? Is it widely held, or concentrated in the hands of a few? Does ownership of...
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Who are the dominant owners of US public debt? Is it widely held, or concentrated in the hands of a few? Does ownership of public debt give these bondholders power over our government? What do we make of the fact that foreign-owned debt has ballooned to nearly 50 percent today? Until now, we have not had any satisfactory answers to these questions. Public Debt, Inequality, and Power is the first comprehensive historical analysis of public debt ownership in the United States. It reveals that ownership of federal bonds has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of the 1 percent over the past three decades. Based on extensive and original research, Public Debt, Inequality, and Power will shock and enlighten.

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Author:
Sandy Brian Hager

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Feb 01, 2018
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Feb 03, 2018

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We understand very little about the billions of dollars that flow throughout the world from migrants back to their home...
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We understand very little about the billions of dollars that flow throughout the world from migrants back to their home countries. In this rigorous and illuminating work, Matt Bakker, an economic sociologist, examines how these migrant remittances—the resources of some of the world’s least affluent people—have come to be seen in recent years as a fundamental contributor to development in the migrant‑sending states of the global south. This book analyzes how the connection between remittances and development was forged through the concrete political and intellectual practices of policy entrepreneurs within a variety of institutional settings, from national government agencies and international development organizations to nongovernmental policy foundations and think tanks.

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Author:
Matt Bakker

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Feb 01, 2018
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Feb 01, 2018

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This publication deals with the management of cooperative innovation activities. The author identifies individual management...
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This publication deals with the management of cooperative innovation activities. The author identifies individual management tasks and designs concrete supporting instruments and methods. The system to be designed by management activities can be understood as an information system which provides the partners of innovation cooperation actionable information. The book is aimed at teachers and students of business administration with a focus on innovation and collaboration management. Practitioners receive a basic insight into the latest management concepts.

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Author:
Svenja Hagenhoff

Date Added:
Feb 01, 2018
Date Modified:
Feb 14, 2018

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Much of the information relevant to policy formulation for industrial development is held by the private sector, not by...
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Much of the information relevant to policy formulation for industrial development is held by the private sector, not by public officials. There is, therefore, fairly broad agreement in the development literature that some form of structured engagement—often referred to as close or strategic coordination—between the public and private sectors is needed, to assist in the design of appropriate policies and provide feedback on their implementation. There is less agreement on how that engagement should be structured, how its objectives are defined, and how success is measured. In fact, the academic literature provides little practical guidance on how governments interested in developing such a framework should go about doing it. The burden of this lack of guidance falls most heavily on Africa, where—despite twenty years of growth—lack of structural transformation has slowed job creation and the pace of poverty reduction. In 2014, the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) and United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) launched a joint research project: The Practice of Industrial Policy. The aim is to help African policymakers develop better coordination between public and private sectors in order to identify the constraints to faster structural transformation and design, implement, and monitor policies to remove them. This book, written by national researchers and international experts, presents the results of that research by combining a set of analytical ‘framing’ essays on close coordination with case studies of successful and unsuccessful efforts at close coordination in Africa and in comparator countries.

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Author:
Finn Tarp, John Page

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Feb 01, 2018
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Feb 01, 2018

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Food price volatility is one of the major challenges facing the global agricultural system today. This was most vividly...
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Food price volatility is one of the major challenges facing the global agricultural system today. This was most vividly illustrated during the global food crisis of 2007–9 when price spikes occurred for key staple food commodities—such as wheat, rice, maize, and soybeans. Given the variety of reactions by governments of countries experiencing similar food price shocks, the 2007–9 crisis offered an excellent natural experiment for generating knowledge on responses to price volatility in particular and on the political economy of agricultural policy-making more generally. This book contains the wealth of collaborative research by a global team of experts on food price policy—the research was undertaken on a sizeable group of low- and middle-income countries that were highly affected by the 2007–9 food crisis. The central aim of the study is to uncover which political economy factors—ranging from the constellation of different interest groups to the nature of political institutions—explain variations in policy responses across countries. The research output proves valuable for at least three target audiences. First, it can inform international organizations and donors about which types of policy interventions can mitigate price volatility and whether they are feasible given a country’s political economy context. Second, it can help national policy makers better understand the trade-offs of certain policy interventions. Third, it generates much-needed further knowledge about the agricultural policy-making process in developing countries, which remains incredibly scarce despite the importance of agriculture to these countries’ economies.

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Open (Access) Textbook

Author:
Per Pinstrup-Andersen

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Feb 01, 2018
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Feb 01, 2018

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״As the world has witnessed the worst financial crisis and climate crisis of our age, during the period of 2007-2009, the...
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״As the world has witnessed the worst financial crisis and climate crisis of our age, during the period of 2007-2009, the issues surrounding the emergence and development of financial markets and carbon markets is becoming an increasingly significant area of research and debate worldwide. By engaging with recently developed methods of research and new areas of practice, this book investigates the political, economic, policy and geographic determinants of the development of financial markets. The volume examines the causality between financial development and aggregate private investment from an economic perspective. It also explores the consequences of political liberalization, focusing on the impact of institutional improvement on financial development. It studies what stimulates governments to initiate reforms aimed at boosting financial development, and analyses the determinants of carbon markets in developing countries from a geographic point of view. This book is essential reading for all interested in economic and financial development, climate change, environmental economics, and applied econometrics. "

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Author:
Yongfu Huang

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Feb 01, 2018
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Feb 01, 2018

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This book provides an analysis of the global monetary system and the necessary reforms that it should undergo to play an...
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This book provides an analysis of the global monetary system and the necessary reforms that it should undergo to play an active role in the twenty-first century. As its title indicates, its basic diagnosis is that it is an ad hoc framework rather than a coherent system—a ‘non-system’—which evolved after the breakdown of the original Bretton Woods arrangement in the early 1970s. The book places a special focus on the asymmetries that emerging and developing countries face within the current system, and therefore on the development dimensions of the global monetary system and of global monetary reform. The book proposes a comprehensive yet evolutionary reform of the system that includes: (i) provision of international liquidity through a system that mixes the multi-currency arrangement with a more active use of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), the only true global currency that has been created; (ii) stronger mechanisms of macroeconomic policy cooperation, including greater cooperation in exchange rate management, and freedom to manage capital flows as a complement to counter-cyclical macroeconomic policy and other instruments of financial regulation; (iii) additional automatic balance-of-payments financing facilities, and the complementary use of swap and regional arrangements; (iv) a multilateral sovereign debt workout mechanism; and (v) major reforms of the system’s governance, based on a more representative apex organization, more equitable participation of emerging and developing countries in decision-making, and a network of global, regional, inter-regional, and sub-regional organizations.

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Open (Access) Textbook

Author:
José Antonio Ocampo

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Feb 01, 2018
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Feb 01, 2018

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